Are you interested to help me develop a Baldur''s Gate / Diablo clone except for one thing: It won''t be fantasy.
I''m in need of Main Programmers (Skilled in either OpenGL or D3D), Musicians (SFX and Music), Sound Programmers (Using DirectSound 3D), Artists (Capable of creating H.R Giger-styled Tiles and Bump-Mapping Surfaces).
My plans are that the game should use a lot of special effects like Environmental Mapping (Reflections in liquids and windows..)
Bumpmapping (Huge Aliens / Monsters, Simulated Waves on different liquids) Particle system (Trails of Super-Mega-Missile-Weapons, perhaps Fire) Realtime Lightning / Shadows (Fire, Laserweapons)
That''s all I can write at the moment..I''m too excited..if you are interested, contact me at Wixner@Hotmail.com or add me on ICQ UIN 65578957
Sincerely Patrik Wixner a.k.a Metus

I"m thinking in order to utilize 3d hardware that the game should be 3d, but the camera angle should be fixed so that the view looks like and isometric game. This wouldn''t be hard to implement and would save time because you wouldn''t have to write an isometric tile engine.

But it also makes level creation hell! Instead of placing tiles you would need to place vertices. Sure, there are benefits of being able to place things ANYWHERE but it would be time consuming to do it. I would also like to see how you would implement a random dungeon creator, that would be worse than just trying to create an isometric-style 3D engine .

I believe that Diablo II is supposed to be full 3D, has anyone else heard this (As I live in Australia and it is not released here until the 6th July, I have yet to see it, but I do have it reserved ).

I would like to see a full 3D implementation (as OpenGL would be so much easier than creating a tile based engine) but I think there are alternatives.

You could just texture map shapes (kites) with the tiles to give the tiling effect. This would mean that your isometric view isn''t iso, but really 3D, just texture mapped onto skewed surfaces.